Bones
by reading-is-in
Summary: My take on the events in Arizona referenced in 'Dark Side of the Moon'  5x16 . Spoilers for that episode. Now uploaded in full.
1. Chapter 1

Sometimes a thing Sam loved about a person made him angry. (Or it maybe it didn't apply to people in general – it might have applied to Dean. Sam hadn't loved enough people to call it a fair sample). Dean had the ability to get ridiculously happy over stupid things – working microwave, a monster movie marathon on TV, successfully smuggling soft porn into the house under Dad's nose (as if Dad would care. The truth was, Dean was embarrassed. He'd happily torment his 14-year-old brother with explicit monologues on the varied pleasures of the flesh, asking outrageous questions regarding Sam's love life, expressing concern for his 'normal development', making Sam turn bright red and clamp pillows over his head, but never in front of Dad). If Sam was in a bad mood, these effusions of happiness pissed him off:  
"My God. This station is _so dumb_."  
"Wow. A microwave. Guess tonight we get _reheated_ takeout tonight huh? All is right with the world." Like it somehow excused their lives. Excused Dad for making them live this way. Like there'd be barbeque and baseball games in the summer.  
Dean had the capacity for content. Most often when it was just the two of them, but dad wasn't in danger: when he'd left them to research something they weren't involved with, or make a few bucks doing temp work. In November –Phoenix, Arizona - Dad was hauling boxes in a warehouse every weeknight. Sam was off school with the most wretched cold in his accessible memory, and Dean was done with his day shift cleaning windows. It was 9 p.m., raining out, and the only light in the apartment came from the staticky black-and-white TV they kept on a stacking crate. Sam was falling asleep, bundled up in a thin wool blanket, head heavy with snot and cough syrup, worn out with the effort of breathing. Dean was sitting closer than normal – close enough that most times, Sam would've felt awkward about it. But gradually he found himself nodding, then sliding gradually sideways, then his head was resting on Dean's shoulder, bone pressing bone through the thin skin at his temple, a bizarre feeling of intimacy, hard and a little jarring. His impulse was to jerk away, but it seemed like too much effort. He might have dozed for a bit – tuned out the buzz of the television, felt his support shift – and then later, maybe a minute or an hour, he realized Dean's arm was around him, holding him in place, the fingers of his right hand curled on the outside of Sam's right arm in a parental gesture. Sam lifted his eyelids with effort: Dean was watching the TV, obviously thought Sam was asleep, the flickering light estranging his familiar face, altering the shadows of his features and darker pattern of freckles. He was still, and utterly – content. Sam was too tired to tell affection from confusion. He fell asleep.

***

Stupidity, he decided, and weak to feel content: to pretend things were acceptable, like this. He was stuffing shirts, socks and a water bottle into his school rucksack this was the last time – no more false starts – the Arizona landscape was dusty with plenty of foliage – hard to track things, and harder to track a Winchester who didn't want to be found. He had walked home from school with Sara Mendez: clever, kind, so pretty she made him ache: small and dark-eyed and smelling of strawberry bubblegum. Once she had moved her slim hands to hitch her backpack up, and their knuckles brushed, hard bone through hypersensitive skin. Electricity shot up his arm to his brain, the reality of another human, another interior, touched. When they got to the apartment, he didn't know whether to offer to walk the rest of the way to her house with her, but she just said,  
"See you tomorrow," and made a little wave, and she didn't ask if his brother was home, or if his brother had a girlfriend. Sam hadn't realized Dad was in. Didn't realize he had been watching. But the first thing Dad said when he got in the door had been,  
"Don't get attached, Sam." That had been the catalyst for an amazing row – Dean wasn't there to mediate, and it finished with Sam throwing a glass against the wall. Dad just watched in shatter. Then he said,  
"You expect me to take your opinions seriously? Try controlling your temper tantrums." And so Sam was leaving – for good, this time. Dad had gone out,– probably to buy booze, Sam thought viciously. He felt drawn, his blood hot – like if he'd just start, he'd know where he was going. Jerking open a drawer, his eyes fell on a half finished bottle of cough-syrup, now congealed in the bottom, from when he'd been so sick last month – a memory. He had fallen asleep on his brother then - hazy, half-absorbed flash of bone-to-bone structure connection. Rolling his eyes, he dismissed it. As if that could somehow _compensate_ for everything else. As if that made anything okay.


	2. Chapter 2

It was, without a doubt, the best escape he'd ever made. No-one else was involved so far - though what exactly he'd do when his money ran out Sam hadn't decided. He ought to feel satisfaction, but instead he was anxious and pressed with the need to move, to keep going, drawn on towards something, faster…he was too frightened to hitchhike, in case some well-meaning responsible citizen turned him over to the cops. Arizona was never really _cold_, not even in December: the sky was dull grey and overcast, but the air fresh, good for breathing.  
Besides, he'd already made it out of Phoenix. They must have been pretty close to the border, because he'd only been walking for three hours and twenty-eight minutes when he came to a sign at the side of the road reading NOW ENTERING FLAGSTAFF. That felt - significant - Sam had the creeping sensation of having been here before, which he told himself crossly was bullshit. This was his first time in Arizona. 'This is Flagstaff!' Was that him? But there were no echoes of something that hadn't happened, not outside of his mind. He pressed the heels of his hands into his closed eyes against the sudden headache, kept them there until he saw the luminous rings of static.  
When this happened - these flashes of impossible conviction - he wondered if there was something seriously wrong with him. Like maybe he had a brain tumour. (Which would explain the he headaches, and that sense of something Other, intrusive, he'd always known…once he'd asked Dean if he'd a twin that died before they were born. Dean had said he was crazy.) He briefly wondered what Dad would do if he did have a brain tumour. Give up hunting? Or just leave him in a hospital someplace? Then he remembered he wasn't going back.  
So he walked.

Sam was being followed. He'd known it for over an hour now, looking back over his shoulder, hand reaching towards his knife and then backing off when nothing happened. He stopped. Stood still. Stared towards the tree line, trying not to radiate anything: neither fear, nor hostility. 'Come on then'.  
The bushes moved. The dog crept out with its belly to the ground, long under hairs in the dirt. It was a retriever of some sort - dusty yellow and lean. It looked up at Sam and wagged tentatively, feathery tail beating up the dust. Sam smiled and breathed out.  
"Hey boy," he said softly, "Or are you a girl? Come here." he crouched down, held his hands out encouragingly. The dog crawled closer. Its tail started to wag in earnest as it sniffled at his hands, eyes brightening, and he saw that it wasn't so much lean as scrawny, ribs and hips visible beneath its fur. Something inside Sam twinged in sympathy: he knew how it felt to be hungry over a period of time. "Hey skinny, you're just skin and bones, huh boy ?" And it was a boy - he could see now. At the word 'bones', the dog's ears pricked up: he wagged harder and put his head on one side, looking expectant. "No, I'm sorry," Sam laughed. "I don't have a bone for you. Is that your name, huh? Bones?" The dog thumped his tail in the dirt and yipped happily, standing up straight and shoving his dry nose into Sam. "Okay well I guess you think it should be, if it isn't your name already. Come on Bonesy, let's see if I got something for you to eat."  
Sam opened his backpack, and the dog immediately stuck his nose in, whole body wagging now. Sam gave him the fish from a tuna sandwich, which he inhaled without chewing, then licked his lips and looked for more - so Sam gave him the bread too, which he ate in the same fashion.  
"No collar huh?" Sam observed. "Where did you come from, Bonesy? You gonna stay with me for a little while?" Bones put his head on one side again, as though trying to understand. He made a whining rumble in his deep chest, thumped his tail, and licked Sam's hand. When Sam started walked again, Bones followed him, and Sam was quietly pleased.

***

The hut was like something out of a dream - and the presence in his mind throbbed like 'Here. I have prepared this for you.' Sam really was going crazy. But there had been rumbles of thunder overhead, the clouds were darker, and Bonesy was shifting uneasily, glancing up at the sky. Sam put his hand on the door, and it opened, swinging inwards like invitation.  
Sam's mouth dropped open a little as shadows sprang from the corners. It was small, clean, woodshavings on the floor, a single clean bunk made up along one wall, a kettle, a sink and an iron stove. He had flashbacks of kindergarten: all those fairytales, kids in the wilderness, secret houses. Well at fourteen he'd dispatched things worse than wolves. Sam was more than willing to chance it. He felt absurdly, personally grateful. Bones huffed happily, ran around the hut a couple of times, dug ineffectually at the floor in one corner before laying down and putting his head on his paws, to all appearances, asleep. Drawn, Sam went to the wooden wall cupboard, opened it to find food. He glanced back over his shoulder, and all around. No further signs of inhabitance. The whole place was neat, as though untouched, as though - waiting for him. There were tins: beans with hotdogs, spaghetti, an unopened jar of peanut butter. Bags of rice and pasta. Sam's stomach rumbled and his mouth watered. He reached for a tin. And there, at the back, was piece de resistance: a present especially for him. A bag of his favorite food in the world: that special mix of dried banana chips, nuts and raisins and coconuts, which they sold in special stores and which they could never afford, but occasionally he got some on his birthday. Sam tore open the bag and started eating.


	3. Chapter 3

It lasted thirteen days by his count, and the number didn't escape him. It didn't feel like real time, but he measured by the sun going up and down. The burning desire to move had left him: irrationally, Sam felt protected, like if he stayed here he was invisible and where he was supposed to be.  
In the meantime, he waited.  
While waiting, he played house, which had always been more Dean's thing. For all the ironic comments about _Sam_ being a girl, Dean had always been the one able to settle in and make a temporary home of wherever they happened to be.  
Maybe it was because of the dog. Bones had glued himself to Sam's side, and he guessed he was the only person to feed the dog in a while. There was food for him: the cupboards contained several cans of the kind of meat-derived product Sam had to really be desperately hungry before eating, and would take rice and beans over any day. Anything which listed 'assorted meats' as a primary ingredient went to Bones, despite the rational part of his brain saying he should be more careful, save some for when he moved on.  
And yet it was hard to think of moving on. Instead he cooked on the small stove, washed up in the tin sink – washed his clothes in there too, then hung them to dry by the small hearth and filled the hut with steam. He had to get wood by himself for the fire, and Bones helped, carrying small and large sticks back carefully in his jaws.  
One night – evening maybe, the dark came down fast and his watch, unprecedentedly, had given up on him – Sam had a revelation. He was sitting and stroking the dog's head, rhythmically, thinking nothing, feeling the knobbled skull under fingertips and the soft, dusty hair. Bones was breathing deep, sleeping. And he remembered – that night, when he'd been sick, how calm his brother had been when he fell asleep on him, connection through the hard warmth of his shoulder against the thin skin at his temple. And he thought: this is content. When something depends on you, trusts you. When you're the only person who knows how to take care of that thing, and if you can just keep it safe, you'll be okay. For a moment he was just – shocked, with the depth of that conviction. Then he was angry – he was not a dog, not a pet to be coddled for anyone's gratification. He was a person. He had – what that book said: _self-determination_.  
He stood up and pushed the dog off him. Then, guilty, he patted its head. Bones thumped his tail twice in the dust, but didn't open his eyes.

* * *

On the thirteenth day his supplies were all but gone, and packed up the remainder. Sam glanced uneasily around the hut, not quite wanting to leave, oppressed with the feeling of having forgotten something. There was nothing. He opened the door. The dog didn't move, and Sam whistled and patted his thighs:  
"Come on boy!"  
The dog looked at him.  
"Come on Bonesy! Come on, I'm going…" he stepped outside and waited a moment. Nothing happened. Sam started taking slow steps away, walking backwards, He kept whistling, concern rising until it was almost panic –  
"He won't come," said the man.  
Sam spun around so fast he nearly tripped. His hand went reflexively to his belt, but he touched air.  
"Looking for this?" said the man, smiling as he held up Sam's knife by the point of the blade, pinched between his thumb and forefinger.  
"That's mine!" Sam exclaimed.  
"Clever boy. You must get it from our side of the family."  
The man was forty-ish, middle height. His cheap suit and patent shoes suggested office worker, but they were rumpled and dusty, sweat stained under the arms as though he'd not changed in a few days. His eyes were bloodshot – but his voice, his voice was calm, eloquent, educated: like something from a badly-dubbed TV show, it seemed to bear no connection to the body from which it emitted.  
"But come now," said the man, still smiling: "What's one little knife after all I've done for you? Fed you, housed you – even provided you with a _pet_. the dog won't be coming out, by the way. He comes with the package." The man snapped his fingers and the hut disappeared.  
"Bones!" said Sam. "What did you do?"  
"Labradors," said the man, ignoring the question: "Stupid, yet not without charm. Above all, highly trainable. They rather remind me of your brother."  
"What do you want?" Sam was edging very carefully sideways, away from the treeline – it seemed like the best course to have open space at his side.  
"The question, my boy, is what do _you_ want: a little house, a dog, an escape route from your father….those are just generalities. We have plenty of other – enticements." The man's eyes flashed, briefly black:  
"You're a demon." Had he known it?  
"You liked that little Mexican girl?"  
"Stay away from her!"  
Every time it opened its mouth it suggested the worst kind of horror. The sound of its voice made his heart race and his blood thrum hard in his ears. Sam was still backing towards the road. The demon wasn't following.  
"I hardly have to," he said, reading Sam's mind: "You'll just keep coming back to us. You know it. It's in your bones."  
The last thing he saw was its smiling face as a horn blared and tires screeched. Headlights blinded him momentarily. Then everything went dark.


	4. Chapter 4

"You're a selfish little shit, you know that?"  
"Bones?"  
His voice sounded strange to his own ears: dried out and thin. Younger. Sam blinked a few times till the room started to come into focus. Generic hospital room. Dean was standing in the doorway, predictably, leaning against the frame and had obviously been crying. He looked furious.  
Sam was aware, distantly, of having a colossal headache - but the pain was peculiarly removed, and he recognized the slight time-delay of prescription=strength painkiller. Misinterpreting Sam's question, Dean said as he came further into the room:  
"Your right wrist is broken. By some freak of luck, nothing else. Driver braked pretty fast. You've got a concussion, though, which I guess you can tell, and you've been out since yesterday. Drink." He delivered this flatly, almost in a monotone, filling a glass from a sink by the bed before helping Sam sit up a little. The movement caused brown-red swirls to descend over Sam's vision, and he mumbled,  
"Gonna puke."  
"Oh, Christ," Dean said with disgust, but he grabbed a plastic basin from under the bed and held it in place while Sam vomited, and his other hand on the back of Sam's neck was gentle, supporting. When Sam had finished, rinsed his mouth with he water, then drunk some, he said,  
"No. Bones is the dog. Where is he?"  
"What dog?" Dean looked at him, half wary, half in concern. He studied Sam s face, as though wondering if the concussion had jarred something loose in his brother's head.  
"In the house. The demon got him."  
"Demon?"  
Sam closed his eyes. He felt ill and in pain, his stomach undecided whether to settle down or not.  
"Hey - Sammy, it s okay," Dean rubbed his good arm awkwardly, his anger apparently forgotten for now: "I think you've been having a dream, huh? You got hit by a car. There wasn't any demon. Jesus, you think you can make it alone, you can t even make it across the road the first day I'm not watching you."  
"First -day?" Sam forced his eyes open again.  
"Yeah - it s Wednesday, Sam. You left Tuesday afternoon and the accident made the local news that night. That s how we knew to come. You didn't think to cut the tag out of your gym shirt." Dean snorted, then his voice wavered for a second before he brought it back under control.  
"Dad is…?"  
"Here. Mad as hell. _And_ scared. He's been with you most of the day, the doc called him to fill in insurance forms. Your name's Thomas Clark, by the way: we had to say you were borrowing another kid s gym shirt. Jesus Sammy, you don t make anything easy for us, do you?" Dean ran a hand across his face. He looked tired. Sam wondered disconnectedly what time it was, but then his eyes fell shut again.

The next time he woke up, Dad was there. It was lighter, and felt like the middle of the day. His head felt clearer and his arm hurt noticeably, which he guessed it ought to be doing. Dad told him sharply that he'd slept enough, and to stay awake this time. He did, but Dad didn't say anything else, just turned and looked out of the window.

* * *

"I want to look for Bones," Sam said from the backseat of the car. It was Thursday, and he was free from the hospital. They were leaving Flagstaff the next day, just staying just long enough for Dad to collect his last paycheck from the warehouse. Preferably leaving Arizona, before the hospital followed up on the fake insurance details.  
"You're not in a position to demand anything," Dad said, without taking his eyes off the road.  
"But –!"  
"Sammy." Dean was subdued. He was sitting in the backseat with Sam, something he rarely did anymore. But Dad was radiating anger, the kind that made anyone wary of getting too close to him. "Bones isn't real, okay? We've been over this."  
Sam closed his mouth. He knew when strategy was more likely to get him what he wanted. So he waited until dark, when Dad had gone out to get the money and go to the store, then approached his brother.  
"What?" Dean sat up from the bunk where he'd been lying with his arm thrown over his eyes. "You need one of your pills?" Sam made a face. Dad had given his prescription medicine to Dean for safekeeping, commenting offhandedly that if Sam was going to act like a preschooler they had better go back to treating him like one.  
"I want to go look for the dog."  
"Drop that. I know you have vivid dreams, Sammy, but enough is enough. There was no dog and no demon, no god damn magic house."  
"Why don't you believe me?" He had told Dean everything, that morning, getting ready to leave the hospital. When he got to the part about what the demon had told him, Dean had cut him off:  
"That's bullshit. A demon wouldn't just stand there and talk to you. Give you a god damn _pet_. You imagined it. And anyway, demons lie." This last after a short hesitation. Sam had been about to exclaim, 'So you do think it happened!' but then a nurse had come in.  
"But it knows something about me," Sam persisted now, coming around to sit on the edge of Dean's bed and slapping him lightly with his good hand: "I told you what it said. About what was inside me. Maybe it knows about – _you_ know…" This was his trump card. He meant it – of course, he needed to know – but the fact you knew the effectiveness of your means didn't make them any less genuine. Sam made the big eyes. His brother wasn't really a disciplinarian, and he never, ever said no to the big eyes. This time, though, was unprecedented:  
"Sammy!" Dean sat up and shoved Sam's hand off him. "Listen to me! There is _nothing_ inside you, okay? Just your freaky, over-active brain! You're the one who goes on about not wanting to be a freak. So don't be one! If - _if_ there was a demon, which I seriously doubt, it was lying to you, okay? It was fucking with us. Trying to screw with our family. Don't let it manipulate you. We have to stay together, okay? We'll be alright."  
"_You_ might be," said Sam bitterly, "It's not in _your_ bones." Immediately he regretted it. "I'm sorry," he said, and Dean quickly masked the shocked look in his eyes.  
"Go to sleep," he said roughly, shoving Sam off his bed, but carefully. "The pills are in the bathroom if you need one."  
"I'm sorry," Sam said again.  
"It's okay."  
It wasn't okay. It wasn't okay that the one thing Dean needed – to keep his family together – he couldn't have, and it might be because of the things that were out there, the dark things that struck at random. But in dark moments, self-aggrandizing and anguished, Sam suspected otherwise. The essential traitor was within the gates. He _was_ a freak, because the protagonists of the action had to be freakish somehow. Even if that turned it into a tragedy. He was the protagonist. It was in him. What was it? 'You'll just keep coming back to us,' the demon had said. That night after taking one of the pills he looked at his face in the mirror, unfamiliar by moonlight, staring and staring until the familiar lines, structures, didn't make sense anymore. Then he got scared and hurried for the bedroom, as best he could without making his headache worse. He got into bed with enough noise to wake his brother up.  
"Sorry," he stage-whispered.  
"It's alright. Go to sleep."  
"Have we got – can we have pancakes for breakfast?"  
"Yes Sam. I will make you pancakes for breakfast. Stop talking."  
"Thank you," he whispered loudly, and forcibly thought about pancakes, the car, Dean, and nothing else until he fell asleep finally.

The End.

A/N: This was hard to write, personally as well as craft-wise. I think I over-identify with Sam because I'm a younger sibling too, and was a tragic, intelligent, reckless, self-centred, _Paradise Lost_-reciting teenager myself not so many years ago…


End file.
